So. One morning a week or two ago my alarm went off like it usually does.

But this time it was different as it woke me from a really consistent, somehow more real, dream that seemed to have gone on all night.

I fumbled the alarm off and realised I felt pretty dopey and I was really chilled and still half in the dream. I got myself ready for work and I still felt really chilled and a bit weird as I set off. I wrapped up extra warm but still felt cold.

I had two songs running through my head from when i woke up, one Abba and one, maybe a shanty or folk song that mentioned 1843 or something. Like a sea shanty or gold prospector's song.

I figure I know where I got the Abba song I had watched the movie Mama Mia again a day or so before..

I wrote most of the details of the dream here about 8 hours after I woke and it was still really vivid, even if some of the details faded. I still have these scenes and flashes in my memory. It had seemed to go on for a really long time without the normal flitting all over stuff.

From details I remember of the dream I think the dream must probably have been set in Europe, in maybe the early to mid 19th century. Clothes, Locations, Transport and stuff I just knew in the dream.

I remember taking lots of journeys in stage coaches and carriages.

I remember seeing some sort of ‘steam leviathan’ was what I thought of it as in the dream. It had one front wheel and could carry people, or tow a carriage with them maybe? It was on a city or town street I think. I didn’t get to ride in it but I saw it. I was looking at the front of it and slightly to the left side of it and it was bearing or turning right. I can’t remember what colours it was painted.

At some point I remember speaking to someone in French, I was joining these people for a journey, I think and I just came out with greetings and chat in French. It seemed authentic to me at the time from what French I do know, but I guess it could have been nonsense, I remember a tiny concern my accent was good enough to pass without raising suspicion- but I think I mostly generally spoke English.

There seemed to be lots of travelling and intrigue and sneaking about in different outfits or disguises. Maybe doing something clandestine. I remember at one point, maybe even more than once, travelling dressed as a young man in something a bit like a simpler more tired version of what a regency dandy or maybe a Victorian gentleman might have worn.

Everything seemed a bit grubby and worn, buildings and clothes. Sometimes paths or the ground was just plain muddy, with grass maybe. Sometimes stones had been laid. None of the clothes looked properly ironed/pressed or even properly clean sometimes, the seams looked poor, puffy maybe?.

I remember in a conversation talking over some possibly cold war or maybe hostile relations with the French. I remember some other conversation about some group, communitarians? communists, communards something like that.

It was definitely in colour because I remember having to quickly disguise myself at some place that seemed like a cross between a country fayre and a farm yard, with big dilapidated looking wooden barn type buildings and canvas marquees.

There were these dancers maybe? People in uniform? costumes at any rate, with patriotic colours. Men and women. The dresses were concentric circles of red white and blue cotton sewn together, big ones of white and narrower of the colours. And there were coloured ribbons ties on the costumes and hats, maybe rosettes. I remember getting one of the outfits and putting on one of those dresses as a disguise to change my look. I think someone had it ready and gave it to me, maybe because I was followed? Then wandering out again in this costume hoping none of the others dressed like that said I was an imposter.There might have been bunting in places.

They reminded me a bit of English Morris dancers or old fashioned Greek soldiers' uniforms, but there were definitely women also.

I also remember seeing this carved painted wooden thing with representations of two women on it. It was mounted in a building. Maybe an inn or hostelry?

I remember two fit slim, taller than me, older women seemed to be very much in charge there, maybe giving me instructions, or advice and help?.

The steam engine didn’t seem to make sense to me so I googled it along with other stuff here is what I found:.Nicolas Cugnot on 23rd October 1769 demonstrated a self propelled three-wheeled vehicle in France primarily for towing artillery. Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) built the first self-moving engine in England. But I didn’t know any of that till I googled it. If I were asked I would have placed steam powered vehicles later than that.

As far as fashion goes the ‘regency period is roughly between 1795 and 1837.

Also French revolutionary wars with other European powers were 1792 until 1802, Napoleonic wars were from 1803 to 1815.

The US Civil war was 1861–1865.

The name Leviathan seems to be applied to anything huge and powerful, like the ‘Great Eastern’ ship or maybe Jupiter type steam engines in the US, but I get swamped by reference to steam punk when I check for the words, so couldn’t really find out much..

The S.S. Great Britain launched July 19 1843 by I. K. Brunel is the first of the large iron-hulled screw-propeller steamships that will dominate the transatlantic trade.

Alexander Bain a lieutenant in the Royal Navy patented a sort of primitive fax machine in 1843 would you believe and congress was authorising the first telegraph line between Washington DC and Baltimore . The typewriter was patented. I half expected ^_^ to find someone patented the TV but I didn’t, that had to wait till the 1930s. Not that I dreamed about fax machines, just that stuff seems to have been thought of so much earlier than seemed likely. Including Steam powered vehicles.

Google has various social reformers in the early 19th century founding rational and philanthropic communities based on common ownership. Robert Owen, founded New Harmony in Indiana, 1825, and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the US such as Brook Farm from1841 to 47. There were Communards in the 1871 Paris (France) Commune.

There was so much upheaval in parts of Europe and Latin America in 1848 it is known as the year of revolutions.

I am not really making out this is anything more than my having a lively interest in lots of things and maybe a good imagination.

I guess my subconscious must soak up way more than I thought. Stuff that is not how I intuitively thought it was. Does anyone else have odd dreams like this?

Still, there is this weird freaky little thought hiding right in the back of my mind. what if I hadn't had the alarm set?

If you were the type to believe in re-incarnation, and if you were the type to believe that humans possess memories of what has been tightly locked away and is only accessible during a fragment of those rare moments between sleeping and waking, then you might wonder if you were dreaming of another life that you once lived.

That -- or just a random brain :)

I'd consider both possibilities and wonder which one was more plausible.